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The Saint Paul Globe, June 20, 1896Abbie Thompson Case.
Jude Brill put in all yesterday listening to the testimony in the fight being waged by her uncle William for the possession of Abbie Thompson. Abbie is a tall, slender girl of seventeen, a brunette, whose face indicates a rather strong will. She still wears her glossy black hair in ringlets down her back, and, sitting opposite her white-haired uncle and his young-looking wife, she hobnobbed frequently with two lady friends and wrote notes to her attorney concerning the testimony. The case will be finished this morning.
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No Longer Her Guardian. Abby Thompson is Not Now a Ward of William.
Judge Brill filed a decision yesterday that finally settles the Abby Thompson guardianship case. The decision affirms the order of the probate court of Dakota county removing William Thompson as the guardian of his niece, 17.
The court reviews all the facts and proceedings in the case which has been before the public for nearly a year. After reciting how Thompson had first attempted to secure the commitment of Abby to the state training school for girls, and failing in that, how he had succeeded in placing her in the house of the Good Shepherd where she was assigned to the reformatory department and consequently came into contact with the wayward inmates, the court decides that Mr. Thompson is an unsuitable person to be the guardian of Abby Thompson. The concluding language of Judge Brill's opinion is:
"The attempt to have her committed to the reform school with the accompanying indignity to which she was subjected, and the placing of her in the reformatory department of the House of the Good Shepard, were entirely unjustifiable and improper, and were gross breaches of her guardian's duty to her. Before William Thompson made the complaint against her, he consulted the county attorney and was advised by him that he had a right to have her committed to the reform school, but I am satisfied that he did not fully nor fairly state the circumstances, I find William Thompson is an unsuitable person to be the guardian of Abby Thompson."